Of Buses and Birmingham
by flower gettin' lady
Summary: Clara and the Doctor accidentally board one of the Freedom Rider buses while exploring in the South. Written as a school project. Clara/Doctor. Oneshot.


**A/N: I wrote this for a school project, in which we were supposed to draw a child's book about Civil Rights. My teacher let me do an actual story (which I'm pretty sure she's regretting right now) and since I'm exciteldy waiting for the return of Doctor Who...**

**In case you can't tell, I'm absolutely obsessed with Clara/Doctor (I hear the ship is being called whouffle?). I just haven't been able to muster the willpower to write anything. Prompts would be glady accepted :) just leave a review or PM me with one!**

**(P.S. sort of spellchecked)**

"Bless you!"

"I didn't sneeze." The Doctor looked up from the console of the TARDIS, over to where Clara was smirking at him from underneath the hood of an absurd yellow raincoat.

She chuckled. "Whatever just came out of your mouth _cannot_ be anything but a sneeze."

"What, Raxacoricofallapatorious?" he asked. She snickered again, attempting to cover it up with a cough. "I'll have you know that it is a planet, and the inhabitants there would kill you on the spot for laughing at them! Well... maybe just one family in particular. Now, more importantly; what are you wearing?"

She twirled overdramatically. "A raincoat and wellies! You said something about the swamps of Sancloon, so I figured I should be prepared."

He shook his head, saying, "If you think that'll keep the mud from getting everywhere, then you'd be one in a line of thousand of people who were very, very wrong..." he shuddered. "That jacket I wore once _still_ has bits of mud in the pockets."

The TARDIS came to a bumpy, rattling halt. Still adjusting to the rough landings, Clara yelped and grabbed onto the railing to keep from toppling over. The Doctor laughed, taking Clara's hand and dragged her, laughing all the way, to the door. "Right. Are you ready?"

"Yes." She said.

He waited, letting her step outside first. Oh, this was always the brilliant part! Showing a brand-new person an entirely different planet, an entirely different solar system, and watching the way their face lit up. It was technically Clara's first trip; according to her materializing in a crashing airplane didn't count.

"Doctor?"

He joined her outside, blinking in the sunlight. The TARDIS had landed it what was the definition of 'the middle of nowhere; there was a dry, dusty road in front of them, and on the other side was a tiny bus station. There was only one bus there, seemingly refueling while the occupants milled around bought things from the shop. It was oppressively hot.

"Describe to me again the 'great, sweeping plains' and 'murky yet glittering swamps' of Sancloon?" Clara teased, arms crossed and she narrowed her eyes to see across the road. "Either you have an overactive imagination or you can't drive your own ship. Either way, it's not looking so good for you."

"Oh, come on, this could be an exciting place to explore!" He noticed her eye-roll. "What? We've no idea where or when we are, and there's a bus across the road getting ready to head off."

"Are you suggesting we get aboard a strange bus and go who-knows-where, leaving the TARDIS by the side of the road?" She asked, peeling off the raincoat, and throwing it behind her in the TARDIS; it was too hot to wear in what felt like summer weather.

He nodded. "Who knows where we'll end up, or who'll we'll meet! We don't even know what country we're in, or if it's Earth at all... mind you, it smells like Earth."

"If you say so." She replied. Of course, with the Doctor around, they'd probably end up in jail for some sort of universal law violation. Not that she didn't trust him, of course. He had, after all, saved her life when the wifi had become sentient (_sentient twitter,_ she thought) and taken over everyone on Earth, herself included.

"Oh, they're leaving!" he said suddenly, interrupting her train of thought. "Come on, let's see if they'll let us join them!"

"Got any bus fare on you?" She inquired, already guessing the answer.

He shook his head sheepishly. "Ah, money... I never carry that with me."

"'Course you don't." Clara said, sighing resignedly. She rifled through her pocket and brought out a few coins and crumpled bills. "Well, I have about ten pounds, so let's hope that we're still somewhere in England."

They crossed the road hand-in-hand, kicking up little eddies of dust as they went. The passengers were just boarding as they reached the bus station, and the Doctor leapt forward to jam his hand in the door and keep it open.

"Hello!" he greeted them, in his typical over-enthused manner. The bus driver didn't seem amused by it.  
"My friend and I were wondering if we could join you.

The driver's face hardened, becoming an unreadable mask. "Why didn't you join at the beginning of the journey?"

"Well, we..." He stalled. _Testing me again_, Clara thought.

"We missed it." She lied. "Caught up with some family business."

"Are you even part of CORE?" One of the riders piped up, casting the two a suspicious glance. "I haven't seen you around before."

"Of course we are!" The Doctor assured them. "Why wouldn't we be? Just, um, a different division.

"And you know what you're getting into?" The driver asked them. Clara wondered where they were headed if it was as serious as he made it sound. "You know the risks?"

The Doctor frowned, wishing he could pinpoint what year they were in, and where. He knew it was America, since the accents gave it away easily enough. It was around springtime or summer, based on the heat, but other than that... it was very rare for him to not know what was going on, and it made him both uneasy and curious. Would it really be safe to bring the woman twice dead with him on a bus full of passengers who seemed anxious of their own destination?

Clara was smiling brightly up at the driver, swinging the Doctor's hand back and forth. She was so happy, and what was the harm? It was just a bus.

"Yes, yes, I know the risks." he said, boarding the bus two steps at a time. "And you'd think that after all the travelling I've done I'd be a little more wary of them, but alas."

They found a seat near the back, behind two men who were having a conversation in hushed voices. Only one or two of the riders seemed anxious; most of them were young and in good spirits, chatting amiably as the bus bounced down the road. It was a lot hotter than the buses Clara was used to in London, which probably meant that they'd gone back in time.

"How many years back do you think we are?" She whispered.

The Doctor shrugged. "Oh, fifty or sixty years? The design of the bus is about right for that, and I'd say that we're in America-"

"Yeah, I gathered that from the accents."

"-somewhere in the South." he finished patiently.

Her brow wrinkled. "Weren't they really racist in the South, especially years back?"

"Maybe I've got the time wrong." said the Doctor. "Or the place. Could just be a really hot springtime in the North. Lovely scenery, though."

"Lovely?" nothing but dry bushes and trees whizzed by outside the window, along with the occasional pond.

"Could be worse."

They chattered on about all sorts of things, but eventually she left him to observing the other passengers while she pulled a battered novel from her back pocket. She always kept a book around, in case she got stuck somewhere dull with nothing to do. Not that it was dull on the bus with the Doctor.

"Lewis Carrol?" He asked, stealing the paperback from her hands and flipping through all the pages in under a minute. "Oh, I loved this one."

"Hush, I'm trying to read." She chided, swiping it back.

He pouted for a good five minutes, finally focusing his interest on the two people in front of them. The first man, African American, had kept glancing at the Doctor and Clara, then leaning over to speak to his white seat mate. Eventually the Doctor spoke up, asking them, "So, you got on the bus in...?"

"A few towns back." the first one answered vaguely. "I can't believe you missed that, it was huge."

"Oh, that's me." The Doctor told him cheerfully. "Always missing out on things... well, actually-"

"I'm sure they don't want to hear about any of your escapades." Clara said from behind her book.

He glared half-heartedly, then turned his attention back to the two men. "Right, what are your names?"

"Jim." The first one said, "And he's George." the white man waved at them.

"I'm the Doctor," he offered them his hand, enthusiastically shaking both of theirs.

Not missing a beat, Clara added, "I'm Clara." without looking up from her book.

"So you said that you're members of CORE?" Jim asked them. He sounded suspicious. "Your accents are... well, I don't know quite what they are, but they aren't American."

"I'm from London." The Doctor lied. "used to be northern, but that faded with time."

"Blackpool." Clara interjected. "Then London."

"So you're from England?" George said, realization dawning in his face. "I thought those accents sounded familiar! ... England has its own version of CORE?"

"Erm, something like that." The Doctor agreed. Offhandedly, he added, "And CORE stands for...?"

"If you're in England's version of CORE, shouldn't you know what it means?"

"Well... we have a different name for it."

Clara snickered. "Shouldn't you know what it means, Doctor? I thought your history was perfect."

"It is!" he protested. "I just can't remember that particular one."

George sighed. "Right. It stands for Congress of Racial Equality. What's the English acronym?"

"Uh, that doesn't matter." said the Doctor. "So is this some sort of group outing? There are a lot of you on this bus, and I'm assuming that you all are part of CORE."

"I thought you knew what this was all about...?" Jim's eyes were narrowed at both Clara and the Doctor now.

"Yeah, he gives that impression, but usually he has no idea what's going on." Clara explained wryly. "Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey, and all that. Makes up stuff when he has no clue what's going on."

"That means something! That's how times works, it's a... oh, nevermind." He said, giving up on the argument. Clara was clever, enough to outwit him on occasion. It was different, but it was a nice kind of different.

"But... you two are pro-civil rights?" George questioned.

"'Course I am." Clara finally gave up on her book and tucked it in her back pocket. "Everyone should be."

"Doesn't mean everyone is."

"Nah, I suppose not." The Doctor agreed, eyes darkening just the slightest. "But look at you! Integrated buses! Talking to each other like the best of friends!"

"Yeah, that's why we all got on this bus." George said slowly, like he was explaining it to someone very stupid. Clara was wary of his tone; there was something she was definitely missing. If only she'd paid attention in class when they'd spent a week talking about world history, America included.

"Yes, right." oddly enough, the Doctor seemed to have lost his flair for mind-numbingly long speeches.

Clara leaned towards him as George and Jim went back to their conversation. "Something up?"

"This all seems very familiar, except that I can't remember why." the Doctor told her, mirroring her own anxiety. "It's a fixed point in time; whatever's happening to this bus, these people, it will change history forever."

"In a bus-crash-that-encourages-seat-belt-installation kind of way, because if so, I'd really like to get off now." Clara said. "One plane crash was enough for me, thanks."

"We didn't crash!"

"We almost did!" she countered. "So, are we going to crash now? It looks safe enough to me, at least the outside did."

"No, no, nothing like that." he assured her after a moment of thinking. Reaching over the seat in front them, he tapped Jim on the shoulder. "Sorry to bother you, but where are we headed again?"

Jim let out a long-suffering sigh. "Birmingham, obviously. Don't you know _anything_?"

"Yes, obviously." said the Doctor. He frowned. "Birmingham..."

George added, "Oh, but the driver said we'd be stopping in Anniston to refuel."

"Birmingham, Anniston, why are those both so familiar?" the Doctor asked, more to himself than Clara. he ran a hand through his hair, tugged frustratedly at the roots like it would make his brain function faster.

"They're in the South, I think." Clara supplied helpfully. "But... why would a bus full of African Americans be going South?"

That was when it hit him; all the questions about if he and Clara knew what they were getting into, talking about CORE and civil rights, and everyone acting generally nervous when he and Clara seemed to have no idea where they were.

"They're the Freedom Riders." He whispered to her, suddenly a lot more anxious.

She didn't understand the significance of the words, but heard the urgency behind them. "And...?"

"Two buses headed for the South, full of members of CORE. They planned to stop segregation by sitting in segregated restaurants in the South until they were served. It worked better in the North, because people up there tended to be less racist, or they just didn't care. The problem was, once they headed down further South..." he let her figure out the rest on her own.

"Oh. Oh!" She realized. "We need to get off, don't we?"

"Yes, we do." He stood up, waving at the driver. "Excuse me! Can you stop? My friend and I need to get off."

The driver chuckled, shaking his head. "Chickened out already, did you?"

"No, it's not like that. We have to get off, it's urgent!"

The bus kept on going, Clara noted with rising panic. At least they seemed to be nearing some sort of town, maybe a few miles off.

"Look, you can get off when we refuel." the driver told him dismissively. "Anniston's just ahead, see?" he shook his head again, muttering, "Cowards."

"Anniston?" The Doctor sat down, glanced about like a trapped animal. "No, no, no, no!"

"Please, tell me, what's happening?" Clara begged him.

He gestured wildly, managing to calm down enough to speak after Clara took both of his hands to keep from hitting himself. "This bus - both buses - were attacked." He extricated his hands, pulling her towards him and kissing her forehead. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I promise that we'll be all right."

"Attacked?" They would be safe in the bus, wouldn't they? She didn't have much knowledge about buses, but the door locked. Surely they could wait it out? "Doctor, you're scaring me."

He glanced towards Anniston, which was looming only a mile away. "They threw bricks in the windows, hit the sides of the bus, and slashed the tires. The bus did get away, but..." He didn't want to tell Clara, didn't want her to panic. To be fair, she was calm in the worst situations, but it seemed wrong to tell her they were trapped on a bus that would have an explosive thrown in it.

"Are. We. Going. To. Die?" She asked, stressing each word.

"No!" He exclaimed, horrified. _The woman twice dead_. "Clara, no. I promise you that whatever happens, you will not die."

"Then why won't you tell me what's going to happen?"

He was saved answering by the bus shuddering to a stop. "There are an awful lot of people out there." George said, trying to sound calm. "Odd, since it's not that big of a town."

The people milling about the bus station were all dressed like they were headed to church, or had already been. At the sight of the bus, one of them shouted.

"Everyone stay calm, it's probably nothing." the bus driver said, carefully steering so they had about three feet between the crowd.

It was most definitely something. An angry shout rose from the crowd, followed by a volley of insults and rocks. The passengers shrieked, scrabbling for a grip on something when the crowd rushed at them like a tide.

They were trapped at the bus station by the sheer numbers of people. "Switch sides with me, do it now!" the Doctor ordered. He didn't wait for Clara's reply, roughly hoisting her up and shoving her past him so that he was closer to the window. Only moments later a brick hurtled through the window just behind them, the two people shrieking and sending bits of glass flying at Clara and the Doctor.

"Ow!" Clara felt a sharp sting at the base of her neck. Wincing, she gingerly felt at the back of her neck until her fingers came away with a piece of glass. The Doctor seemed to be doing the same, cursing in a language unknown to her as she tried to brush pieces out of his hair.

She glanced up at an ominous hissing noise. She could just barely see a group of people clustered around the wheels of the bus. The Doctor had said that they'd slashed the tires; it sounded like there was already no air left. Weren't they supposed to get away?

The bus driver was starting to panic. His eyes darted back and forth across the mob, trying to figure out a way to drive from the bus station without killing anyone. The locals had picked up the paces, with crowbars, baseball bats, and other farming tools hammering against the Greyhounds metal sides. The entire bus was jolted and vibrating. It was as though the entire thing would rattle apart in seconds.

Somehow, miraculously, the driver managed to navigate the crowd enough, forcing them to part. The bus limped along steadily, a few stray bricks whizzing past harmlessly as they picked up speed and headed down the road.

The level of volume in the enclosed space quieted marginally, people starting to realize just what they'd gotten themselves into. Shaken, Clara scanned the Doctor to assure herself he was fine.

"You're all right?" he asked her, the moment she'd about to say the same. He frowned, gently laying a hand on her neck and cringing when they came away red. "Glass?"

She nodded. "It's superficial, just a scratch." They watched the road, seemingly clear other than one car ahead of them. "How about that? We got away."

"If only I was that lucky." He muttered.

Clara shook her head, gently forcing him to look down so she could brush the remaining shards of glass from his hair before he hurt himself. As it was, his hands had nearly been cut to ribbons. "Honestly, you're the most jeopardy-friendly person I've met in my life."

"Am not!" he whined, sounding much like a five-year-old.

The bus shuddered ominously, still going along at a fairly steady pace. Clara glanced up from what she was doing, and noticed that they were slowing down. "Oh, I think the tires are finally gone." In front of them a car kept slowing down to match their pace, and she noticed that when the driver tried to pass, the car were swerve in his way.

The Doctor was trying to come up with some logical way they could get out of the bus and avoid the mob he knew was headed towards them. Of course, even if they

did manage to miraculously escape the bus, they'd be beaten down by the mob.

It was also then that he realized they were about as far back as they could get, right near the window where-

"Get down!"

Clara yelped, her head making sudden contact with the plastic covering of the seat in front of her. Something hit the back of the bus; it was the mob again, weapons swinging.

"Don't you think that was a bit unnecessary?" Clara asked, grimacing and gingerly feeling her forehead. "It's not like they can get in-"

Something exploded, spraying sparks and spouting smoke everywhere. Screams rose from the passengers, especially the ones in the back of the bus. For a split second there was a bright flash, and then the bus was on fire.

"What do they think they're doing!?" Coughing, Clara shielding her face and tried to keep on two feet. The passengers were swarming to the front, pounding on the door.

Hurriedly, the Doctor urged her out of her seat and nearly propelled her into the walkway, insistently pushing at her back when she couldn't move forward. "Clara, we have to move."

"I can't." She snapped in between wheezes. The smoke was starting to make the interior of the bus hazy, outline the struggling figures as they tried to escape.

"Oh God, they've locked the doors!" someone at the front wailed. There were muffled thumps as they tried to smash them open.

"Let 'em burn!" the crowd shrieked, at a fever pitch. They'd stopped hitting the bus now that it was on fire, but they kept up their insults and threats. A few had the door pinned shut.

The Doctor slid into one of the closest seats and wrenched at the window fruitlessly. It wouldn't open, and the flames were licking closer, making the metal heat up. He knew that the door would be opened, and they would escape, but... it seemed a lot less likely mixed up in a sea of smoke and screams and tears.

Clara doubled over, coughs wracking her frame. "Here, take this," he urged, digging a handkerchief from one of his bigger-on-the-inside pockets (he's picked that up in the seventeenth century, hadn't he? But never mind that) and pressing it to her face. "Try to keep from breathing smoke.

She nodded gratefully and held the white cloth up as a filter. Black smudges were left by her nose and chin. "Not... h-helping..." she gasped.

There was a tremor in the metal floor, and what sounded like the beginning to an explosion. Someone outside shouted about the fuel tank exploding and like magic the crowd retreated, casting wary glances at the blazing bus.

"Out, out, out!" The Doctor ordered at once, gently prodding the people in front of him. "Quickly, while they're gone!"

It was a dizzy, mad dash for freedom. Clara singed her hand on overheated metal, stumbling down the steps of the bus instead of diving headlong down them. She tried to do a head count, but it was a lost cause and she knew she and the Doctor were near the back, so if they had gotten off then so had everyone else.

She made it about five feet before she doubled over, coughing so violently that she was sick on the grass. Sides heaving, she crawled a few feet away before collapsing. Was this what suffocation was like? It felt like death, it _was_ death; hot, sweaty, breathless, paralyzing death.

"Hey, hey, it's alright. I know it feels bad now, but just try to breathe for a few minutes." the Doctor soothed, voice somewhere near her head. She screwed her eyes shut, drawing rattling breaths and cursing his alien biology. Damned respiratory bypass system, he probably didn't even _need_ to breathe.

Eventually she got her bearings, and pushed herself up into a sitting position. "Right, then..."

"Feeling better?"

She just sighed, wiping her face and looking at how her hands came away grey-streaked. "Yeah, 'm alright."

Still dizzy, she blinked in confusion as several men approached them, one carrying a metal pipe. "You... you sit with them, next to them, like you're friends!" Then he said a word that Clara had thought she'd never hear anyone say, not in the twenty-first century; but, of course, it wasn't.

The Doctor's eyes burned with absolute fury. Of course he would stand up for them, that git, and get himself in trouble-

"They're human beings, like you." He hissed, shooting up to stand at eye level with them.

The man with the pipe glared at him, and before she Clara could even comprehend what was happening, the Doctor was on the ground.

"No!" She screamed, instinctively scrambling in front of him. "No." She commanded, voice rough from smoke but still commanding.

It was a stupid thing to do.

She screamed again, this time because the man was hitting her too, his friends joining in without any

hesitation. It was a flurry of metal and feet, flailing limbs colliding with her body as she tried to protect her head. She kept kicking out blind but had the feeling that she was kicking the Doctor, not the men.

A gunshot rang out, and as soon as they'd come, the men retreated. Clara opened one wary eye, then the other. Slowly, painfully, she rolled onto her other side and edged closer to the Doctor. "Hey." She ventured, careful not to jostle him. "Hey, can you hear me?"

There was a red welt across his cheek, swelling up more by the minute. Blood was coming from somewhere, possibly his stomach, and he had one arm curled around his ribs. However, his eyes fluttered open and he gave her a weak smile. "Yeah."

In a tangle of limbs they limped their way along the grass, getting about thirty feet away from the bus before they both had to stop. Some women were flitting about the wheezing passengers, offering water and medical aide. At least they weren't all hateful, Clara reflected.

She winced and drew back from the Doctor's touch. "Oi, I'm a bit sore, if you don't mind."

"Sorry." He went back to carefully tracing her face with his fingers, ghosting over her head to check for concussions. He stopped at her stomach when she drew in another pained breath. "They kicked you?"

"Yeah." She said. "But never mind me, look at you! Haven't you got broken ribs?" She was impressed that he'd walked that far in his state, and was able to help her when he had to be in unimaginable pain.

He gave her bleeding arm a cursory check, frowning and gesturing for one of the women to bring him supplies. Obliging, one of them left a roll of gauze. "I'll get you some water, sweetheart," the woman added, giving the two a sympathetic smile.

"Doctor?" Clara asked.

"What?" He unrolled the gauze, ripping off a section. "Oh, yes, I did break some ribs. Possible damage organs too."

"And...?" She groaned, exasperated. "We need to get you to a hospital!"

The Doctor smiled, bemused. "Don't need a hospital, they're already halfway healed." she finished off bandaging her arm and secured with a piece of scotch tape - how his pockets held so many things, she had no idea. "Timelord, remember? Alien biology."

"Cheating." She retorted, pouting ever-so-slightly.

They stayed there for a while, watching the smoldering ruin of the bus. The fire had died down, the a firetruck had finally showed up to keep it from becoming a wildfire hazard. They'd probably waited to give the protesters enough time to injure all the passengers, Clara realized bitterly.

"Will everyone be all right?" She asked.

For a moment she thought maybe he wouldn't answer. "They all get to hospitals, and as far as my knowledge goes, they all survive. The ones who reached Birmingham were beaten much more severely. We were lucky." Luck seemed like hardly the word for it, but there wasn't much else he could say. "You know, the bus headed to Birmingham doesn't even hear about this attack until it's too late. In the end, everyone had to quit. It's too dangerous, and the nation is busy with other

matters." At her puzzled look, he added, "War negotiations."

They settled into a comfortable silence, watching the people around the bus slowly make their way home, or into ambulances. At last the Doctor pulled Clara gently to her feet. "Right, we'd better be off. The KKK will probably show up here later, and that's something we have no escape from. Besides, I've got stuff in the TARDIS medical bay that can make that bruise go away in minutes." He gestured to her swollen arm. "Hairline fracture, I'd say."

"Oh, lovely." She took his hand with her uninjured one, smiling despite the day's events. "So... rest up, and then maybe an alien planet?"

"What about a nice trip to see Shakespeare?" The Doctor offered.

"But, Doctor... _aliens planets_."

He shook his head, grinning nonetheless. "What is it with humans and alien planets? If you think about it, they're just the same as you. You're alien to them.

Though, I suppose, I did promise you the swamps of Sancloon..."

Clara face lit up, and she rose to her toes and gave him a peck on the cheek. "That's more like it."

"Or we could go to Utopia 7.0, they have the most magnificent coloring there! The toxins in the air-"

"_Toxins_?!"

"-yes, very detrimental to your health if you stay longer than a year, but we won't - the toxins make all the colors so vivid that the simplest things are stunning. Oh, or we could visit the magnetic belts of Andromenda, or-"

Laughing, she listened to him babble, swing their entwined hands back and forth as they made the long walk to the TARDIS.


End file.
